Making the Call: Repair or Replace Sports Centers?

It was 9:15 a.m. on a Friday, and the parking lot at the Montanoso Recreation Center in Mission Viejo was jammed.

Inside, heads bobbed to the beat of a Jazzercise tape. Legs pumped on the Lifecycles and treadmills. The pool outside churned with morning water aerobics class. The tennis courts were alive with smashes and volleys.

Just another day in this South County city.

Thirty years ago, when Mission Viejo was a vibrant new municipality, it won national praise for its five massive, Olympic-quality sports complexes and recreational centers.

But the years have taken their toll. The Montanoso center is plagued with plumbing problems and, in some spots, rotting walls. Some of the other sports centers, stretched beyond capacity thanks to the city’s booming young population, also are showing their age.

With most of the facilities in desperate need of repair, the city is now beginning the delicate task of deciding whether to fix them or demolish and replace the facilities.

The proposals, now being considered by a city task force, have stirred debate and uneasiness among residents who have grown accustomed to their neighborhood sports centers.

The most controversial idea is to close the Montanoso and Sierra centers and replace them with a bigger facility at the city’s World Cup Soccer Center on La Paz Road--on fields used by American Youth Soccer Organization leagues and elite soccer clubs.

“The city’s been very good to us over the years, but right now it seems like we’re being squeezed out,” said Wayne Fraser, vice president of the Pateadores, a top-notch youth soccer club. “We don’t understand why they would want to do that when we need those lighted fields--AYSO needs them, and so do the high school kids.”

And it’s also going to be tough to convince Wendy Bucknum that any of the centers should be closed.

“We have a great community feeling here,” said Bucknum, a regular at Montanoso’s water aerobics class. “These neighborhood pocket centers are the reason a lot of people moved here.”

But Andy Miles, who moved to Mission Viejo 35 years ago and uses Montanoso’s pool for lap swimming, likes the idea. The 50-meter pool would be twice as big as Montanoso’s, and there would be plenty of parking.

“It makes absolute sense,” Miles said.

Two city sports centers leased to independent operators are in much better condition, including the Marguerite Aquatics Complex on Marguerite Parkway--where Olympic gold medalists Janet Evans and Greg Louganis trained.

Mission Viejo’s sports centers were part of the “California Promise,” a sales slogan developers used in the 1960s and 1970s to sell families on Mission Viejo--a community with nice homes, convenient shopping, neighborhood schools and great recreational facilities, said Anne Marie Moiso, director of marketing for Rancho Mission Viejo, the family-owned company that developed the land.

But the pools and tennis courts that made Mission Viejo so attractive are now becoming more and more of a headache for the city.

“At Montanoso, for example, we’ve added on and made modifications over the years, but it is really very inefficient for what is going on over there,” said Dan Joseph, Mission Viejo city manager. “I mean, there’s a fireplace in the weight room. It’s built more to be a clubhouse, and there just isn’t enough physical room.”

The city’s low membership fees, which start at about $187 per year, make the centers a popular alternative to private clubs, which can run hundreds of dollars a year. While it’s a great deal for residents, the fees don’t generate much revenue for the city. Running the centers just isn’t cost-efficient anymore, Joseph said.

“It’s like if you have a car, and it’s only worth about $3,000 or $4,000,” Joseph said. “Do you want to spend $3,000 to $4,000 to fix it up, or do you just want to go out and buy a brand-new car?”

City officials have nine options, ranging from making only necessary repairs to replacing all the centers. Costs range from $1.19 million for minimal repairs to $9.7 million for razing and rebuilding the centers.

A mid-range plan has the most appeal to city officials, and it’s the one that’s generating the most controversy: demolishing two facilities and building a mammoth recreation center on the World Cup Soccer fields. The price would be about $4.5 million.

“We figure we could save about $300,000 a year in operating costs by consolidating the two centers into one larger facility,” Joseph said.

Joseph said the city will do what it can to find other fields for soccer teams, but they may not be as nice as the World Cup facility.

But those assurances have done little to temper the concerns of soccer coaches like Fraser.

“The city needs to think very carefully about building over those fields,” Fraser said. “The reality is, lighted fields are at a premium. You just can’t get rid of them.”

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Quality Over Quantity

Mission Viejo may close two older recreation centers and expand a third to create one large center.